


Not just a place but people

by WheelCoveredInEyes



Category: Tanis (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Meerkatnip | MK, Bisexual Nic Silver, Flirting, Fluff, Gen, Hair Brushing, Hurt/Comfort, Nic is poly and in love with both MK and Geoff who are also in love with him, Nic's dog, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Ships are if you squint, Super Monkey Ball 2 (referenced), discussion of Brooklyn 99, they just haven't figured it out yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 10:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19721650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WheelCoveredInEyes/pseuds/WheelCoveredInEyes
Summary: Nic comes home from Tanis. His friends are waiting. A few thousand words of plotless hurt/comfort-flavored fluff, set just after the Season 1 finale.





	Not just a place but people

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you have a craving for some very specific fluff, and you can't find it, so you just have to write it down. This is mine. Nic loves his friends and his friends love him, but none of them are very good at saying it out loud, but it's whatever.
> 
> Geoff's character is mostly unchanged from what we thought it was at the end of Season 1, because I'm still not sure how I feel about the more recent revelations. I think you can read it the same no matter how you think of it, though.

Alex doesn’t see him at first. One of the interns saw it, apparently, but there was a lot of chaos with the police and the agencies, and it ends up being a few minutes – and a few dozen yards away from the cabin – before she realizes that they’re carrying Nic.

And then, of course, all the terrible three-letter agencies in the world can’t keep her away.

The rest of the day is long, and even though Alex is buzzing with relief, she can’t relax into it. She stays with Nic as much as they’ll let her. There’s the ride to the hospital, and an exam, and then questioning from the police. It went for three hours, with a break in the middle for a brain scan. If he looked bad before, then afterwords, he looked – well, he looked about the same. Once you reach rock bottom, you stop digging. He was pale, and dirty, and haggard, and his long hair was badly gnarled.

Still, he’d hugged her back, and said to her, falteringly, wearily, that he was alright, and thanks for getting him. He was bruised, and he said that his legs were sore, but he was uninjured. He wasn’t even concussed. He was malnourished, a little, which didn’t seem to make sense – he wasn’t missing for that long. Alex wondered if he’d been eating enough before he disappeared, and it was hard to tell. She knew he’d been sleeping poorly. She had too, obviously. They’d eaten together at their favorite Mexican restaurant on Broadway the night before he vanished, and she hadn’t noticed anything off.

There was a bit of a to-do about what to do with Nic, whether he should stay at the hospital overnight or not, but he really was uninjured, so they sent him off with Alex. The doctor included a prescription from the hospital’s pharmacy, after Nic had mentioned that he hadn’t slept in four days. He probably needed it. Alex was no stranger to insomnia, but Nic had an energy in him – a heavy, unstable energy, like a long iron bar standing on end. He hadn’t nodded off during the breaks in the interviews or anything, just slumped on the wall or into Alex’s shoulder. He zoned out, certainly, but his eyes never shut.

Alex tended to microsleep throughout the day if she hadn’t slept during the night. This felt different.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asks, during the drive to his house.

“I really only remember what I told the police and the doctors,” said Nic. “With flashes. Of inside. The hallway, the blood, the.”

“Nothing coherent.”

“No.” He sucks in a breath. “Thanks for getting me, Alex.”

“You said that before. _Of course._ I mean, you’re welcome. There’s no question that I was going to try.”  
“Yeah, but you _did it_.”

“Well, yeah.” Alex smiles. “I’m glad I did too.”

Nic’s answering smile is faint, wavery, but it’s there.  
  
\----  
  
  
“Thanks,” he says, once they reach his front door. “I’ll call you...” he pats his pockets.

“No way,” says Alex, who has his keys. “I’m staying with you tonight. I’ll stay on your couch. You need to eat.”

She lets them inside. Chewie the lab mix goes absolutely batshit when Nic walks in.

“Thanks,” says Nic. Alex thinks she hears a deep relief seeping into his voice. (Well, the first thing he says after walking in is “Chewie, good girl, good girl, I love you, who’s a good girl, it’s alright, Chewchewchewchew.” It’s adorable and necessary.)

“Does Chinese sound good?” Alex asks, giving them space. She hasn’t missed that Nic has been swaying badly all day, and had nearly toppled when he bent down to hug the dog.

“Yeah,” says Nic, “but I think, first I need a shower. And then to sleep for, like, a million years. At least twelve hours.”

Alex laughs. “Get going with the shower, then. I’ll put some clothes outside the door.”

He’s out soon, in fresh pajamas. Alex notes that he hasn’t yet bothered to start untangling his hair. He’s just blotting it with a towel, and she can’t blame him.

“You look better,” she says. This is technically true. “Will you, uh, be able to sleep?”

“I might need whatever it is the doctor gave me,” he says sheepishly.

Alex makes his bed, and reads the fine print on the pill bottle, and gets him a gatorade along with the correct dose. Chewie has excitedly refused to leave his side since he left the bathroom. Alex is convinced she’ll have to distract the dog and tire her out in order to get Nic some quiet, but she seems to get the point as soon as Nic lays down his bed, and she jumps up and nestles quietly in the folds of the comforter.

“I’ll just be in the other room,” says Alex. “Just yell if you need me.”

Nic takes the pills, and as Alex watches, the livewire iron energy in him disintegrates and he drops fast, fast, fast asleep.  
  
\----  
  
He shoots up. Several things are going on.

There are miles of dark wood tunnels.

There is the blur, sliding in and around him.

There is a dog. His dog. His Chewie, best Chewie, best girl, good girl. She sounds distressed, and she’s whining and pawing.

There is his name, being repeated, over and over.

There is the scuff of wet flesh along wood.

There is a hand, on his shoulder. “Nic,” a man’s voice is saying. “Nic, Nic.”

“No, no,” says Nic, desperately. He’s back in the cabin already. He never left.

“Nic, it’s okay,” says Geoff van Sant. “Look at me, buddy.”

He looks.

“You’re in your house, Nic,” says Alex Regan’s voice from farther away. “Look around. You’re in your own bed. The walls are blue. Your Canyonlands poster is here. Chewie is over here.”

His eyes track where she points, thoughts coming through the surface in simple segments. Yes, the walls are blue, where they’re illuminated by the light coming through the hallway door and not black. This is his bed. That is his retro-style Canyonlands National Park illustration on the wall. His rapid breathing starts to slow.

Chewie is unhappy. Alex Regan is in the end of the room, just in from the hallway. Geoff van Sant is next to him, staring at him with big soft eyes, his hand heavily on Nic’s shoulder.

“Hi Geoff,” Nic mumbles.

“Hey buddy,” says Geoff, a terrific half-smile breaking across his face. “You want a hug?”

“Sure,” says Nic, because he really does. The surrealism of the exchange feels like a threat, until Geoff reaches out without hesitation and crushes him in a bear hug. Nic could cry.

“What happened?” he asks.

“You were screaming,” says Geoff, who releases him after a minute. “You had a nightmare.”

“Pretty gnarly one,” adds Alex.

“It’s alright, Chewie,” says Nic, reaching out to pet her.

“I needed to get some stuff from my apartment, so I called Geoff over to keep an eye on you,” Alex explains. “I hadn’t left yet, though, when we heard you.”

“Th – thanks,” says Nic. “I think I’m good.”

“You sure?” says Alex.

“Yeah.”

“Go get your stuff,” says Geoff. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“It’s alright,” says Nic, at the same time Alex says, “You alright with that, Nic?”

“Yeah, of course,” says Nic.

(Alex has been _terrible_ about pushing him to, you know, _get more than a beer_ with Geoff, but she seems to have eased off for now, maybe given the him-almost-dying thing and the general-state-of-him thing. Thank goodness.)

"I'm glad you're back, man," says Geoff, after Alex has left. "Want me to give you some space?"

"No," says Nic, sleepy and tongue-tied, then tries to backpedal. "No, I don't think I'll be able to - uh - get back to sleep any time soon."

"Okay," says Geoff.

"Do you mind...?" asks Nic, not really sure what he's asking for.

"Not at all," Geoff says.

So they sit on Nic's bed and chatter, until Nic's eyes droop and his sentences trail off. It gets hazy after that, and Nic doesn't have the clearest memory of what happens, but he could swear to his sleep therapist and God and Tanis itself that somebody tucks him in.

\----  
  
She puts a few things in front of him: a pump bottle of kid’s hair-detangling spray, his comb, and his brush. “I thought you might want to give your hair some TLC,” Alex explains.

Fuck, thinks Nic, feeling the bird’s nest that’s formed around what was - at some point, probably last week - a perfectly decent ponytail. He pulls a long face. “Ugh. I might have to just cut it off.”

“No!” says Geoff. His sudden intensity makes Nic blink, and then giggle. “You can’t do that. It’s a national treasure.”

Nic thinks he’s probably blushing, but fuck, he can’t help it, this is literally the first time he’s laughed in days.

Alex is laughing too. “National treasure is right. Want to let me take a shot at salvaging it, then?”

“Um, sure,” says Nic.

“Only if you want.” Alex picks up the comb.

“No, I do,” says Nic. Of course he likes his hair long. When it doesn’t look like one giant half-assed (Korean-)white-guy dread, which is basically what it is now.

“Unless you want him to do it,” Alex continues casually, waving the comb toward Geoff. _Goddammit, Alex!_ He imagines it for half a second and blushes for sure, and his face does _something_ before he can formulate a response. Something he really hopes isn’t incriminating.

“Aw, no,” Geoff says, before Nic can respond. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’d just make new and exciting kinds of knots. We’d be even worse than when we started.”

“Well that’s a shame,” says Alex, turning her face so that Geoff can’t see her smug grin. Nic can’t believe he ever let her have a podcast.

She moves him to his ottoman, and sits on the stuffed chair behind him, on her knees. He’s not exactly unused to friends or lovers playing with his hair – Alex had been known to drunkenly braid it in college, and it made a nice focal point and even handhold on more than a few occasions – but the gentle tugging, as Alex saturates it with detangling spray and then starts searching for the ends, is foreign and entrancing. Hypnotic, almost, with just enough pain at the occasional sharp twinges to keep him from floating away. His head drops forwards and his eyes wander. If he were less out of it, he thought, if he were doing okay at all, he’d probably find it a little infantilizing or maybe embarrassing – but, well, he isn’t, and it’s a nice favor of her.

“Is this weird?” he asks Alex, worrying anyways.

“You disappear into a forest and weird cabin for five days, and you’re worried if this is weird? This doesn’t get to be the weird part, Nic,” Alex mock-lectures. He laughs and closes his eyes. Bits of moss and a twig hit his forearm as Alex drops them out of his hair. Geoff has a magazine open on his lap – _who gets magazines anymore?_ \- but he’s watching them, placidly, friendly. Nic takes a deep breath, and, hesitantly, turns his mind loose to wander.  
  
\----

  
MK turns up sometime that afternoon. Alex had left to do an interview. Geoff is taking a nap in Nic’s bed, which Nic is trying not to think about. (He isn’t sure why Geoff hasn’t just gone home, but he’s not _objecting_.) There’s knocking on the door, and Nic is slow and cautious about examining through the peephole, before he cranks the lock and the door open. MK barges into his house. “Jesus fucking christ, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Who else would it be?” Nic can’t help but smile.

“I dunno, a Tanis zombie? I mean, I don’t know that you’re not.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Great. Gonna have to trust you on that. I brought sandwiches. Hey, is this Brooklyn 99?”

“Yeah, you watch it?”

“I _love_ it.”  


So they sit down on opposite ends of the couch, and with little additional talking, watch a couple episodes together. Halfway through the first episode, MK pulls out her laptop, chewing on her necklace. (Nic had looked up “rubber necklace for biting” after the first time he’d seen her wearing it, and learned that that was, in fact, exactly what it was.) She doesn’t look up at the screen much, but seems to follow the plot anyway.

At the end of it, after Nic goes to the bathroom and comes back, MK readjusts and sticks her legs up on his lap. She glances up, barely, a trace of hesitance crossing over her face. She doesn’t ask, and her uncertainty doesn’t stay long.

“Who’s your favorite character?” Nic asks, wanting to assure her it’ s alright.

“Guess.”

“It’s gotta be Gina,” Nic says.

“What? You’re nuts. Obviously it’s Rosa.”

“Okay, good choice,” says Nic, because it is.

“I mean, _Gina_?”

“She’s tech-y, and...” Nic waves his hands. “She doesn’t tolerate fools.”

“Uh. Thanks.”

“It’s a compliment.”

“Sure it is.”  


“What about you?” she asks a minute later, as the intro for the next episode plays.

“Um. Rosa’s good. I like Terry.”

“Why?”

“He’s funny. And wholesome. And sensible.”’

“Yeah, he’s always putting the breaks on Jake doing something stupid. You need a Terry.”

“I have a Terry.”

“What – oh, your cousin. He enables you. That doesn’t count.”

“Fine.”

“How about Mr. Strong and Protective Marine?”

“He’s… too unflappable for Terry… and he was in the Army. I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah, dude’s pretty fucking hard to flap. Mr. Hard to Flap. Mr. Handsome Soldier.”

“Hey, he’s in the other room,” Nic whispers.

“Jesus, Nic,” MK drawls, not lowering her volume at all. “Right after you’re out of the hospital? I mean, congrats, but that's moving a little fast -”

“Not like that!” Nic’s face burns. “He just -”

“Do I need to give him The Talk?”

“I think Alex gets dibs on giving it to him if – no, god, it’s not that, she just called him -”

“Oh, fine,” MK sighs.  
  
They get in a couple minutes of the episode, uninterrupted.  


Before MK pipes up: “What are you waiting for, then?”

“MK!”

“I’m just saying, he clearly -”

Nic groans and muffles his face in a pillow. “You are such a Gina.”

MK shrugs. “Eh, I’m warming up to it.”  
  
\----  
  
Alex gets back to Nic’s house later into the afternoon. The early-winter sun has already set. She carries a pizza, and a big wicker basket, and finds the most charming scene imaginable inside. MK and Geoff sitting on opposite sides of the couch, beer bottles from Nic’s fridge in front of them. They’re playing Super Monkey Ball 2 on Nic’s elderly GameCube.

Between them, Nic is partly-sitting, partly lying down, curled up in sleep and covered haphazardly in a blanket. His head is on MK’s shoulder, and his curled-up feet press into Geoff’s thigh.

Geoff turns around slightly as Alex unlocks and opens the door. “Hey, Alex. Need a hand?”

MK seizes the moment to knock Geoff’s character off the course, and steal the lap. “Hey Alex,” she says, placidly.

“Hey!” says Geoff.

“Hey,” says Alex.

“Aaugh!” This is from Nic, who has just jolted awake. 

Everyone looks at him, and he looks at everyone. He moves from panic at some unknown terror into, Alex guesses, confusion over how exactly he ended up in this situation – but as he comes to his senses and realizes that he’s actually 100% okay with the current arrangement, he just rubs his face.

“I have pizza,” Alex announces, unnecessarily. “And, um, Richard Strand gave you a gift basket.”

“A what?”

“It’s got, uh, candy. And local jam. And cookie mixes. That kind of thing. He says he’s glad you’re alright and that it was the least he could do on short notice.”

“That’s… really sweet of him,” Nic says, surprised.

“Yeah, I thought so too.”

“What kind of pizza?” asks MK, beating Geoff again. Geoff is distracted by staring at Nic’s face tenderly. It’s a shame, Alex thinks, that Nic doesn’t seem to notice, but they’ll get there. They have time.

“Half olive and spinach, half mushroom,” Alex says.

“Ew,” MK says.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” says Alex. “Um, do you two want to stay? We can order another.”

“Sure,” says Geoff.

“Whatever,” says MK. “I’ll throw the mushrooms at Mr. Can’t Steer Straight when Nic’s in the Room when he gets ahead of himself.”

“You mean ahead of _you_ ,” says Geoff, not missing a beat.

“I want in on the next game,” says Nic, still sleepy and struggling upright.

“You want in too, Alex?” asks MK.

Alex laughs. “Yeah. Sure. Sure.”

Nic scoots over on the couch, to make room.


End file.
